Olympic Skater's Training Program.

 
Mon, 21st Feb 2022 - 3:07 p.m.

I came across this training schedule from Swedish speed skater Nils van der Poel, who won gold in both the 5k and 10k speed skating at the Winter Olympics.
How to skate a 10k -some key insights: The published schedule is here with a lot of running and biking involved https://www.howtoskate.se/_files/ugd/e11bfe_b783631375f543248e271f440bcd45c5.pdf

Don't cheat yourself while building your aerobic base: "The stronger I got aerobically, the more anaerobic sessions I could do later on. I purified the aerobic season. I only trained aerobically... I believe it was not to be efficient to do high intensity work all year around."

Fuel your training: "During this season I ate a lot, probably around 7000 kcal per day. I gained about five kilograms during the summer to stay on the safe side when it came to preventing injury. I tried to eat a lot of fats so that my energy flow during the day would be more even."

Control your intensity: "I dropped the hours to 25 hours weekly and tried to do as many of those hours on threshold as possible. It was important not to start off too hard so I always made a smooth transition from only going aerobic to reaching high levels of weekly threshold hours...I usually went a little under 4mmol/l in order to increase the total threshold volume."

Be specific, there is not enough time/energy to do everything: "Some pro athletes say that, since they are professionals and can train as much as they like, they might as well add some weight training, and some stretching, and some core, and some technical sessions, and some training competitions, and some coordination sessions... All training sessions are performed at the expense of other, more efficient, training sessions, or at the expense of recovery after these sessions."

Find a rhythm of training that works for you: "I almost always trained after a 5-2 day training program. Training for five days and then resting for two days. My rest days were usually during weekends. In that way I could spend the weekends doing fun stuff with my friends. Usually I did not train at all during rest days. I rested both my mind and my body."